Distraction Quotes

Humor and seriousness can be an unstable mix.

~ Richard Brookhiser

She told me she loved me. She told me a lot of things. Some of those things were true, and some of those may or may not have been true. It’s kind of hard to tell, because to be honest, I wasn’t listening.


~ Dark Jar Tin Zoo

The worlds high on doing and distracting and as result we need to keep doing and it doesn’t really matter what we are doing, as long as it is distracting.

~ Evan Sutter

Traffic is more of the in between time where we think more about where we are going than where we are at the moment.

~ Tom Vanderbilt

The nobility of England would have snored through the Sermon on the Mount. But you'll labor like scholars over a bulldog's pedigree.

~ Robert Bolt

If thou rememberest that thou art going to heaven, thou wilt not sleep on the road. If thou thinkest that hell is behind thee, and the devil pursuing thee, thou wilt not loiter.

~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Like all great readers, he could create for himself a wall of stillness.

~ Philip Zaleski

A survey of Canadian media consumption by Microsoft concluded that the average attention span had fallen to eight seconds, down from 12 in the year 2000.

~ Timothy Egan

One cannot underestimate boredom as an incentive to write.

~ Philip Zaleski

I am trying not to philosophize. It is un-military. I think I can dig myself out of my academic mind and make an efficient officer.

~ James Carl Nelson

Children content with parents who are physically close, tantalizingly so, but mentally elsewhere.

~ Sherry Turkle

Are you placed where others are sitting down idly, doing nothing? Rise to the work with all your powers; and when the sweat stands upon your brow, and you are tempted to loiter, cry, No, I cannot stop, for I am Christ's. If I were not purchased by blood, I might be like Issachar, crouching between two burdens; but I am Christ's, and cannot loiter.

~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

we sulked and, in the finest tradition of bored soldiers, sat around throwing stones at each other.

~ Patrick Hennessey

The phrase having it all has little to do with having what we want.

~ Jennifer Senior

Potential was a red herring to plot a life of wandering curiosity.

~ Nicholas Dawidoff

The author explores the result of endless choice. It is not only overload, but a profound loss of unity, solidity, and coherence in life.

~ Os Guinness

After giving it some thought, I've decided to name my monkey mind Ricky Bobby. I was thinking about Latin names like Javier, but I don't want to make my jumping, distractable self sound mysterious and sexy. Ricky Bobby makes me laugh. A name like that seems silly, not strong. Just a goofy little thing that doesn't know what to do with its hands, likes to go fast, and loves tiny, infant, baby Jesus.

~ Anna White

Twitter is a serious writing distraction. As are grapefruits. The two have nothing else in common.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

You must mind and not lower the Church in people's eyes by seeming to be frightened about it for such a little thing.

~ George Eliot

I said to all the things that throng about the gateways of the senses: Tell me of my God, since you are not He. Tell me something of Him. And they cried out in a great voice: He made us. CS Lewis

~ Philip Zaleski

When grace has won the day, the worldling seeks the world to come.

~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

The shadow of the passions of the moment transversed this grand and gentle spirit occupied with eternal things.

~ Victor Hugo

The soul is torn apart in a painful condition as long as it prefers the eternal because of its Truth but does not discard the temporal because of familiarity.

~ Augustine Of Hippo

Our feelings of anxiety are genuine but confused signals that something is amiss, and so need to be listened to and patiently interpreted -- processes which are unlikely to be completed when we have to hand, in the computer, one of the most powerful tools of distraction ever invented. The entire internet is in a sense pornographic, a deliverer of a constant excitement that we have no innate capacity to resist, a seducer that leads us down paths that for the most part do nothing to answer our real needs.

~ Alain De Botton

Unbelief is a master carpenter at cross-making.

~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Her little butterfly soul fluttered incessantly between memory and dubious expectation.

~ George Eliot

Talking on a landline with no interruptions used to be an everyday thing. Now it's exotic, the jewel in the crown.

~ Sherry Turkle

He closed the laptop. A sure sign I was about to receive his full attention.

~ Ransom Riggs

Distraction leaches the authenticity out of our communications. When we are not emotionally present, we are gliding over the surface of our interactions and we never tangle in the depths where the nuances of our skills are tested and refined. A medical professor describes the easy familiarity with which her digital-native resident students master medical electronic records—but is troubled by the fact that they enter data with their eyes focused on their digital devices, not on the patient in the room with them. Preoccupation with technology acts as a screen between the student and the patient’s real emotion, real fear, and real concern. It may also prevent these residents from noticing physical symptoms that the patient fails to mention. The easy busyness of medical record entry is a way to sidestep the more challenging dynamics of human connection. But experienced physicians know that interpersonal skills are essential to mastering the art and science of medical diagnosis.

~ Marian Deegan

I needed something to distract me-anything far away from my parents’ drama-just for a second. And when I saw my chance I didn’t stop to think about how much I’d regret it later. An opportunity sat on the bar stool beside me, and I lunged at it. Literally.I kissed Wesley Rush.One second his hand lay on my shoulder, and his gray eyes rested, for once, on my face, and the next my mouth was on his. My lips were fierce with bottled emotion, and he seemed to tense, his body frozen in shock. That didn’t last very long. An instant later, he returned the aggression, his hands flying to my sides and pulling me toward him. It felt like a battle between our mouths. My hands clawed into his curly hair, tugging it way harder than necessary, and his fingertips dug into my waist.It worked better than punching someone would have. Not only did it help me release the agonizing pressure, but it definitely distracted me. I mean, it’s hard to think about your dad when you’re making out with somebody.And as disturbing as it sounds, Wesley was a really good kisser. He leaned into me, and I tugged at him so hard that he nearly fell off his bar stool. In that moment, we just couldn’t get close enough to each other. Our separate seats seemed like they were miles apart.All of my thoughts vanished, and I became a sort of physical being. Emotions disappeared. Nothing existed but our bodies, and our warring lips were at the center of everything. It was bliss! It was amazing not to think.Nothing! Nothing… until he screwed it up.

~ Kody Keplinger

To some people, employment is a distraction. To all entertainers, distraction is employment.

~ Mokokoma Mokhonoana

Being self-owned is a state of mind.

~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Increasingly we confused the pursuit of happiness with the pursuit of pleasure.

~ Rick Perlstein

The lightheaded and the fashionable are always willing to shed tears for distant underdogs.

~ Richard Brookhiser

Far from a source of suffering, their adopted faith had been a source of power.

~ Barbara W. Tuchman

The narrator refers to a character as an oily scoundrel whose hands were heavy with the money that stuck to them.

~ Pearl S. Buck

you turn into a shrewd tactician, making a series of cautious semicommitments without really surrendering to some larger purpose. You lose the ability to say a hundred noes for the sake of one overwhelming and fulfilling yes.

~ David Brooks

The author tells a story wherein a missionary friend of his was invited by unbelievers on a train ride to play cards. The friend declined, saying that he did not bring his hands with him. He explained to the astonished group that the hands attached to what they saw as his body belonged to the Lord, and he was thereby able to explain the Gospel.

~ Watchman Nee

He [Abram] believes that the PRESENT is the only real thing and everything else is an illusiona distraction

~ Jennifer Delucy

Samuel FB Morse's SECOND question over the telegraph was, Have you any news?

~ Harold Holzer